sj, congratulations! That's lovely news to read!

Both Miss Kitty and Noodle were shelter cats. Miss Kitty was the first cat we had them pull out and she was so sweet. She had been found on the streets of Alameda, single and pregnant, the hussy. So she was a cat of some experience when we met her. The kids were little at the time, so I gave her tail a gentle but toddler like yank to see what she would do. She just looked over her shoulder and went back to being snuggly. Her shelter name was Olive, which we all agreed didn't fit. K-Bug insisted that she be the one to rename her and came up with the imaginative Miss Kitty. I still silently add Fantastico to the end to make it a little more unique.

Noodle was maybe 9 months old when we found her at the local shelter. We had checked out a few black cats but she was the first that seemed interested in us humans and she practically hugged my neck when I held her. Yes, I did a gentle yank on her tail - while my kids were older, we babysat little ones who might not be gentle. Again, no real reaction, so she was ours. Her shelter name was Noodle and she is one, so it stuck.

Jadzia we picked out from a litter that DH's co-workers nbarn cat had. She was the one that came running up to us. Pixie was found by the side of Airline Hwy (I like to remind her of this, she's such a princess, totally looks like she should be in a Fancy Feast commercial) and brought into the store I was working at by a customer, theoretically to be seen by other customers and find a home with one of them. She walked around on the counters all day yelling at us and came home with me that night to stay. Wednesday, of course, came from the egg farm. Farm owner plopped the fluffy black kitten on my shoulder, she went to sleep on me, that was it.

Shadow presented himself as a kitten at our front door, inspected the residence, used the litter box, went to sleep in the food bowl. That got him a home. I figure the universe will present me my next companion in a similar way.

-t that's really sweet! We haven't decided on colors for the nursery yet and probably won't until we find out the sex of the baby. But maybe yellow and white? Also, I'm highly allergic to wool.

I genuinely don't know how to tell if I'm improving at my job or not. I'm getting less negative feedback (pointing out things I missed, using wrong style, etc.), but also no positive feedback (like "good job on this one," etc.).

My boss is ridiculously, insanely busy, so I feel like asking her if she's seeing improvement is an imposition on her time and like I'm being a baby who needs my hand held. But I seriously don't know if I'm improving or just fucking up less than I used to, which is not so much "improvement" as it is "you are less of a blight on this company than you used to be."

I was in the Humane Society's cat room just to see what was available, thinking I'd make a couple trips before deciding who I'd adopt. One side of the room had cages set into the wall for cats who were in the adoptions process or needed to be isolated from the room. I opened Alix's door to see who was in there (she didn't like being out with all the rest of the cats), and she poked her head out and licked the end of my nose. "I'm going home with YOU!"

I was not thinking I'd adopt a cat that night, so she had to wait in her carrier in the car while I stopped at Fred Meyer on the way home to buy cat stuff....

"Fucking up less" is pretty much exactly what improvement is.

It seems like, from out here totally uninvolved, you are very hard on yourself. Steph. I would think that including a note asking for confirmation that you are getting the hang of your job (more professionally phrased) along with something you are submitting to your boss would be okay.

Glad I asked, sj! No wool.

Steph, they still send you work. That's the biggest clue that you're doing something right, especially as a freelancer. Also, what -t said.

It seems like, from out here totally uninvolved, you are very hard on yourself. Steph.

I am, yeah. But I also don't have any kind of metric to tell if I'm improving, beyond "fucks up less." I guess that's improvement.

If I had been doing this for years and still needed reassuring, that would be nuts. But it's only been 6 months, and I just can't tell if I'm making any progress at all, or if they're just keeping me around because it's more work to train someone new than it is to keep pointing out that I forgot to ask the author about XYZ.